Every day I hope. I hope that some news event will break that somehow reverses what happened on 11/9. I hope that some scandal will break that brings about an inevitable collapse of the Trump machine. I hope that some reporter will find evidence that votes were counted wrong in the rust belt. I hope that the Clinton campaign will hold a press conference with proof of some fraud in Florida or North Carolina.
Tonight I was hoping that Trump’s outlandish tweets about millions of illegal votes in New Hampshire, Virginia, and California might have led to some media firestorm. Instead I am watching supposedly liberal MSNBC tonight give some tepid response to the story. Frankly, Rachel Maddow’s grin is starting to wear on me. Right now, Brian Williams is interviewing nothing about Republicans who are shrugging their shoulders and taking an “is what it is” viewpoint. Ben Ginsburg just accused the Clinton campaign of deligitimizing the results of the election. Chris Hayes gets a laughing Michael Steele on who just throws up his hands and basically says, “What were you expecting? It’s Trump. Ha ha ha ha.” Not funny. And Lawrence tells me in the Rewrite that I need to be thankful that I have electricity. I get it Lawrence, I have it a lot better than the folks in Mulawi. You are right. But, it’s just not the time to hear that.
So I sit hear just resigned to darkness. Nothing is going to change things. Trump was right. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and would get away with it. My boss at work is a great guy. He is a Mexican-American who has pulled himself out of the poorer neighborhoods of Del Rio and San Antonio to attain a high position in the administration of a school district. He can hold a crowd in the palm of his hand, and can teach any subject to any class. Today, briefly we talked politics. He voted for Hillary and his brother (who is also successful) voted for Trump. I showed him the video of the lady at the Michael’s berating the employees — calling them animals, etc. He started talking about how Trump was going to do some weird stuff. We talked about how our jobs were threatened by the pending Secretary of Education. We surmise we will probably be working for charters soon (hopefully I can hang on for a few more years until retirement). I then explained to him how the Republicans were going to go after Medicare. He really had no idea about that. I told him how he and I would be the generation that would get ripped off the most with vouchers. Then he said something interesting. He said, “They’ve already taken our social security.” I stopped and said, “What do you mean?” He then explained how we would never see Social Security. That it was already bankrupt and it wasn’t going to be there for us. I was flabbergasted of course. I explained to him that he was mistaken. I told him that the Republicans would go after Social Security next, but as of now, it was there for us and we had to fight to hold onto it. He had been convinced by the right wing that Social Security was doomed. I told him that he had been tricked into thinking that so he would not fight when the time came for Republicans to take it away from him. This is where we have failed. We have allowed these misperceptions to permeate the electorate so they are easily manipulated into voting against their best interests. It feels like a tsunami though. And at 10:45 PM on Monday the 28th of November, I’m not sure how much fight I have left.